


supernovas

by LadyCharity



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Disenchantment, Family, Fear, Gen, Loss, Love, Rebellion, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9184771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity
Summary: It is easy to be brave and join the Rebellion when the Empire takes everything away from you. Defecting from the Empire was not an easy choice for Bodhi.In which Bodhi Rook struggles to put the cause of something greater before everything he has ever held dear.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: I have never read the novelization of the Rogue One movie. (I also have...never...watched Star Wars...movies that were made before 2015. But I love Bodhi. Please someone give my space son more love and a nice day, because I sure haven't) But I found myself fascinated with Bodhi because I think he does often reflect a question that people who study history often have: how much responsibility to civilians bear of their nation's crimes? Those sort of questions led to the more predominant use of guerilla warfare and civilian atrocities in wars, and there's always the debate of how justifiable it is to strafe Japanese civilians who work in a factory when all they're doing is to try to earn money for food, or how much responsibility a civilian has when they're living in Nazi Germany as just a milkman or something but if their lack of rebellion signifies their compliance to the regime. And the more I thought of it, the more I realized how much of a risk it must have been for Bodhi, who possibly could have had all the security and safety in the empire because he was just another cargo pilot doing his work and paying his bills, to knowingly give that all up because he couldn't remain compliant anymore. 
> 
> Please enjoy!!

“Look at that, my little bird,” his father used to say. “Look how the stars are singing.” 

Bodhi Rook would crawl onto his father’s lap--to his mother’s protests (You’re not careful enough, Bodhi, you must be careful--) and look through the kaleidoscope. His father, unbeknownst to him, would twist and turn the scope pointed towards the night sky until the little gems would glimmer and twist into flawless patterns. It wasn’t until Bodhi was about nine years old when he finally caught on that this was not a real telescope. 

“What makes them do that, Abbu?” Bodhi said. 

His father pulled Bodhi closer to his chest, so that his answer tickled the back of Bodhi’s head.

“Supernovas,” he said. “When the stars are at their most beautiful.”

“What are su-per-no-vas?” said Bodhi. 

“When the stars explode,” said his father. “Pow!” 

He spread his fingers apart before Bodhi. His hands were big, and calloused, fingers knobby and brown. 

“Pow!” said Bodhi, bouncing a little in his seat. His movement rocks his father’s wheelchair. 

“Shhh-hhh-hhh,” said his father, wiggling his fingers like shimmer.

“Ss-ss-ss,” said Bodhi.

“Like a firecracker,” said his father. “Like the ones you watch on the other side of the city walls.”

Bodhi’s eyes brightened. He loved climbing onto the roofs of the town, watching the fireworks soar and sing and dance over the capital’s town square, basking in their fiery glow and knowing that the fireworks knew he was there watching them, even if he was too barefooted and too hungry to be invited. 

“Why do they explode?” said Bodhi.

“Little bird, stars are like us,” he said. “They are born, they live, and they die.”

Bodhi’s heart shuddered. He lowered the kaleidoscope with shaking hands.

“Does it hurt them?” said Bodhi, and he started to cry. 

His father wrapped his arms around Bodhi and let him weep. When Bodhi’s sniffles softened, his father spoke gently.

“It doesn’t always have to hurt,” he said. “Stars live a long, long life, and when they die, they sing. When they die, their core turns into strong iron, like knives, or armor.” 

“Armor?” said Bodhi. 

“Yes,” said his father. “Because they are strong, and sturdy, and steady.” 

He poked Bodhi in the stomach. Bodhi giggled and wriggled away, nearly falling off of his father’s lap. 

“Not like you, my little bird,” he said. 

“Then what?” said Bodhi.

“Then, it glows,” said his father. “Brilliantly, boldly. Like your Ammi’s smile.” 

Somewhere in the background, Bodhi’s mother snorted. 

“The most beautiful you could ever imagine,” his father added, loudly. 

Bodhi giggled. 

“So I could see it from anywhere?” he said. 

“Everywhere,” said his father. “And then, it rains gold and silver.”

Bodhi’s eyes widened. 

“How much?” said Bodhi.

“I don’t know,” said his father. “Perhaps fields of it. Skies of it.” 

“That’s so much,” he said. “How much bread could it buy?” 

“A whole bakery!” 

“How many mangos?”

“The entire forest!” 

“How many shoes?” 

“For a village!” 

Bodhi looked to the sky, which was speckled with stars, imagining a sunrise of endless gold. 

“How far away is it?” said Bodhi. “How long will it take to fly there?”

His father laughed.

“Little bird,” he said. “It will be too difficult for you to come close. The light will be blinding, and then there’s a black hole to worry about.”

“I’ll learn to fly well,” said Bodhi. “I’ll fly to a supernova, and then I can harvest all the gold and silver from the dying star. And then I can buy you new legs.” 

His father breathed deeply. His grip on Bodhi tightened, as if to hold him back before like a rocket he would shoot to the sky, leaving only a flare and dust behind. 

“You haven’t grown out your wings yet,” said his father. 

“I’ll be like those starfighter pilots,” said Bodhi. “I’ll fly the fastest, biggest planes. I’ll bring the whole star back home. Pow, pow!” 

He gripped tight on the wheels of his father’s chair, steering them to weave along the rocky path outside their home. His father laughed. 

“ _ You _ may fly, but I’ll stay on the ground,” he said. “But you mustn’t fly too far, or for too long. Your Abbu can’t stand you staying away for so long.” 

“I wouldn’t,” said Bodhi. “I would fly because of you, after all.” 

He stared at the sky, which was speckled with stars, and imagined a place in the stars where his family could eat, and where his mother would not spend sleepless nights scrubbing the floors for scraps of money, and where his father would not weep in the corner when he thought no one was listening, his sickly legs like matchsticks. He imagined that sort of place in the sky, and he saw it in brilliant, beautiful light. 

 

_ (Bodhi--to awaken) _

 

The Empire is not a friend, it is a savior. There is a difference. 

There is no money left. That much is simple. Bodhi’s mother’s hands are knotted. His father’s skin is stretched. Bodhi watches his parents starve, trying to pass off extra scraps of food on his plate as a trick of the eye (he knows better, so he spreads the rice across his plate so that it looks fuller, and his parents will submit to keeping bites for themselves) Their home is as old as the temples on Jedha, but no blessing of the Force dwells there to save them. So Bodhi turns to the Empire instead. 

The stormtroopers in their slick white suits scare him, and their looming ships make him think of stormclouds. Their slogans unsettle his stomach and their brashness wrestles with his conscience. But they give Bodhi a job, and money, and although he had aspired to comb the dying galaxies for gold to make his parents full and proud, piloting a cargo plane is close enough. 

He shuttles through the universe, the entire galaxy open to him. He spins and dives when no one is keeping track of him, he delves into the swirling pools of stars and marvels and the plumes of color. He is close enough to the stars to bathe in them and far enough away from them to think them diamonds.

Bodhi brings money to his parents. He buys them a new home, he massages his mother’s hands. He fixes his father’s wheelchair and fills their plates with rice and fruit. He tells his father of what the skies  _ really _ look like, how the old kaleidoscope did not give it any justice, and how the stars smell, of how many shades of blue exist in their sky. It is not as much money as if he had managed to become a starfighter pilot, however, so he cannot yet afford to buy his father medicine for the pain, or let his mother spend her days in rest instead of work, and he replays the mistakes that he made in his examination at the academy seven times a day, as if he could have a second chance.

But as he descends to an Empire base and docks his ship, he jolts at the sound of the stormtroopers’ rifles and finds himself unable to look away or hide his face when rebels are publicly executed in the town square. In those moments he itches to race back to his ship, soar through space and imagine a corner of the galaxy that no one has ever touched, where the trees are ripe with bulbous mangoes and it is quiet, and soft. But even when he takes off, with more artifacts and documents to take away, in the quiet of space where the sun and stardust are silent, he feels the Empire stretch around him like suffocating rubber, and he can never go far enough to puncture it. 

“I’ve always just wanted to see the stars,” he once said to a man he met  on one of his breaks. The man is high-ranking, powerful, but he also spends his nights walking along the edge of the cliffs of Eadu, looking out towards the rock-laden sea. Bodhi wants to stretch his legs out before another flight, and is surprised at how soothing this man is, when he wears the white capes of the Empire that normally make Bodhi flinch. “Someday, I’d like to take my parents with me on a ship. Show them the galaxy they’ve taught me.” 

The man hums. He picks at his fingernails in some distracted manner, but he is still listening. His clever eyes are old. They are also frightening. But they are also company, and flying in space for days on end can get lonely. 

Once, Bodhi arrives to Eadu, and it is the engineer who personally greets him. Bodhi is three hours off schedule for no fault of his own, and his core shakes at the thought of the consequences. 

“The shipments are late,” says the engineer. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I’m sorry,” Bodhi says, and he cannot bring himself to look into the engineer’s eyes. “I’m very sorry.”

He is shaking. He has been shaking for the past hour. He wants to weep, but he is at work, and he must not think about what he had just seen on Jedha before he had gone to work. 

Bodhi knows that his distress will not go unnoticed, so when the engineer steps closer to him, he holds his breath. 

“What is the matter?” says the engineer. “Are you all right?” 

“Yes,” says Bodhi. “Everything is going to plan. I only encountered a--delay, of sorts.” 

The roads to the spacecraft ports were blocked, and the stormtroopers were weeding out rebellion sympathizers. The ones that they accused, they made a public display of them. The event took its time and its toll on Bodhi, who sat in the cockpit of his ship afterwards, trying to catch his breath. He spent the past hour imagining himself throwing himself in front of the stormtroopers with clever words and bold choices to demand that they leave the townspeople--his neighbors and city--alone, or imagined himself diving into the well and pulling the scapegoats out one by one before they drowned, bloated in the city’s water as a reminder. He imagined all that he did not have the courage to do, instead bringing money to his parents and trembling because he could no longer pretend that his father’s fixed wheelchair or his mother’s bruised mangoes were worth it.

The engineer does not give him time to grovel for forgiveness before he puts a firm hand on Bodhi’s shoulder. 

“Take a breath,” he says. “You look as if you’ve run for your life.” 

“Not for mine,” says Bodhi, and for a moment, the weight of the galaxy crushes his chest. 

They stand in silence, under the stars. Finally, the engineer turns away and walks towards the quiet, and he gestures for Bodhi to follow him. So he does. 

There is no explanation as to why such a high-ranking engineer would want to spend any sort of lunch hour or dinner break or after-hours with a cargo pilot. In the back of Bodhi’s mind he wonders if his tears were a sign of failure, and he was about to be led to a cavern to dig his own grave before stormtroopers would execute him in it. But instead, the engineer walks, quietly, and Bodhi feels a nagging sense that the engineer is as desperate as he is. 

“Where are you from?” says the engineer. 

“Jedha,” says Bodhi. “I grew up there.” 

The engineer smiles.

“I’ve always wanted to see Jedha,” says the engineer. “The ancient temples. The famous markets. The history and life.” 

Bodhi’s shoulders stiffen. He wonders if the engineer is testing him, if he is gauging for any Republic ally who still put worth in the old temples in which Bodhi used to hide in as a child, finding peace in the mysterious crevices of the city. 

“I do not think you will find what you are looking for in Jedha anymore,” he says carefully. 

The engineer does not answer. 

“What do you look for in Jedha?” says the engineer. “If not for those?” 

Bodhi takes in a deep breath. 

“My family,” he says, and there is a strange tremor in the word. It has become a notion in him that his family is tied to the mass executions he witnesses nearly daily in his home and work, and no matter how very wrong it feels, he cannot untangle the two from each other. He cannot serve his family without serving the Empire, and the implication shatters him. 

“The truth is,” Bodhi says, then he stops himself. This catches the man’s attention. 

“Yes?” he says.

Bodhi cannot repeat it. He does not know the Empire like a friend, but he knows the ringing of his ears when stormtroopers’ guns shoot down civilians. He can tell that this man knows far more about that. The man seems frightening, but the Empire is even moreso, but he cannot say that aloud. He cannot say how much it frightens him to keep his head down when others have theirs chopped off. 

“I wouldn’t do this job if it weren’t for my family,” Bodhi says.

There is a beat, and Bodhi’s heart clenches when he wonders if he has said too much already. Then, a breath. 

“I know what you mean,” Galen Erso says. 

 

_ (Bodhi--to understand the true nature of things) _

 

When Jedha crumbles before Bodhi’s eyes, the only thought that his shattered mind can repeat is, Abbu and Ammi are stars now. 

There is no iron core, like the most impenetrable shield, that could protect it (Bodhi’s father’s weary arms were the only thing that ever protected him), there is a flash of light that burns his eyes rather than dazzles him (and it is nothing like his mother’s smile), but there is no gold or silver, no singing, no beauty. The destruction is so vast that it fails to be intimate, and Bodhi’s battered mind obsesses over images of his parents sprouting wings and flying from the earth before the fires could collapse on them. 

Perhaps his father’s wheelchair and his mother’s new shoes were once not worth the Empire. Bodhi fears the moment when he might realize that the rebellion is not worth his home. So he takes his grief that is threatening to collapse and buries it deep in his core to solidify and fossilize, because there is a ship to fly and the engineer to seek on Eadu, because if the destruction of Jedhu is worth it then Bodhi cannot stop now. So, he replays in his head, again and again, the thought of his parents among the stars, counting out for themselves how many shades of blue their eyes can see, and laughing at how narrowly they escaped death. 

But he is in a stolen ship with a motley gang of rebels, with a plan that he is barely coming to terms with. Three days ago he was the cargo pilot for the Empire, shipping whatever was necessary across the galaxy. Now he has lost everything, in the hopes of saving everything. 

For a wild moment, when that crushed grief in his core lashes out at him, he wants to rage at Galen, who is now dead and does not have to worry about losing anyone anymore, because surely if Galen had not sent him to Saw with a message then Jedha would not have been destroyed. Then the rage turns to himself, for he knows that nothing would have saved Jedha, because the Empire was killing it already, grenade after grenade, execution after execution, until the children were nothing but shells. 

Then the rage turns to fear, and confusion, and a heavy weight, because if it were not for Galen taking a risk to trust him, Bodhi may have been left to die on Jedha unknowingly like everyone else. Random chance never makes sense to him, and neither does the choice that he had made, risking his life to defect from the Empire because he realizes that he cannot bear them any longer. 

“Why did he choose me?” he wonders aloud.

Jyn’s shoulders brace. She knows what he means. But she does not answer, because she does not know the answer. Galen was her father, but she does not understand his heart any more than Bodhi does. 

“Well,” she says. “Good that he did, because you chose to rebel.” 

No, the death of his family and his home is not worth it. This, Bodhi firmly holds onto, because the Death Star had clawed out his heart and left a painful, bleeding hole in his soul. The destruction of Jedha will never be worth it, so Bodhi flies the ship and deems it Rogue One, and arms his bleeding soul with a rebellion against the Empire, because it is the Empire that demanded his home as a price in the first place. And to hell with the Empire that would demand it from anyone else anymore.

 

_ (Bodhi--the knowledge that comes with suffering)  _

 

My little bird, his father said one night. Why are you suffering? 

Bodhi hid his face from his father. He knew he would regret it if he did not look his father in the eyes this night. There was a hologram message stuffed down his boot. 

I know I must do something, said Bodhi, but I’m so cowardly to do it. 

He could hear his father’s wheelchair creak closer to him. A calloused hand with knobby fingers took his. 

Why must you do it? said his father. 

Because, said Bodhi. It is right.

And why are you afraid? said his father. 

Because, said Bodhi. I may never see you again. 

His father’s hand tightened around his. Bodhi knew he would regret it if he did not look his father in the eyes one last time, but he knew that he could not. If he did, he did not think he could do what he was set out to do anymore. 

How far into the stars are you flying away from me? said his father. 

Far, far away, said Bodhi. Beyond the stars. When stars explode, they hurt, Abbu. They are in so much pain. I’ve heard them cry, Abbu, I’ve heard them cry out for mercy. It is not worth the gold or the silver that fill our pockets. Forgive me. It is not worth the shoes on Ammi’s feet, it is not worth the clothes on your back. Forgive me. It is not worth the roof over your head that keeps you warm, it is not worth the medicine that eases your pain. Forgive me. Forgive me. 

His father was silent. The hologram message in Bodhi’s boot dug into his skin, causing it to chafe and run raw. He looked up to the sky, blinking back tears, fearing that to betray the Empire, he must betray his love. 

Then, his father spoke.

I will not ask you to stay, he said. Only that you come back to me, my little bird. My Bodhi. Come back to me. I will stand all the pain and the cold and the hunger if you do. Come back to me.

It was a starless night. 

 

_ (Bodhi--freedom from suffering, and to cease to exist) _

 

Bodhi knows the Empire like an enemy, like a nightmare, but he is still young. He lost everything he ever knew in a matter of seconds, but he is still hopeful. When Bodhi sets out on that beach, he thinks that he will see the others again. 

His hands fumble when he fiddles with the radio. His breath catches at the racing beams set to kill him. His heart is racing and in his mind he thinks  _ wait until I tell Abbu about all of this _ because it has only been a matter of days and there are too many things to do than to remember. His heart races and the radio reaches the Rebel Fleet and he says  _ deactivate the shield, now!  _ and he could finally breathe freely when they hear him. 

The grenade falls into the ship. He only has a moment to take a breath before the grenade explodes, and he becomes gold. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
